Elena Mitsi is a Senior Research Associate at Oxford University, UK. She obtained her PhD in 2020 in mucosal immunology from the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine,UK. Her PhD work was focused on the effect of S. pneumoniae nasopharyngeal colonisation on human lung immune landscape,exploring innate and adaptive immune components.

She is the Immunology Lead of COVID-19 population studies and a number of pneumococcal and viral co-infection studies performed within the Experimental Human Pneumococcal Challenge model (EHPC) in the UK. Part of her research work is on host immune responses that associate with control or susceptibility to pneumococcal colonisation and immune responses to vaccination systemically and at mucosal sites. Her recent work is focused on bacterial and viral respiratory co-infection, aiming to understand the mechanisms that influence susceptibility to respiratory infections,study pathogens interaction and host immune mechanisms during coinfection. Elena is also recipient of a Robert Austrian award, aiming to study pneumococcal reservoir and the drivers of pneumococcal transmission in healthy adults.